We
kicked off the monthly volunteer meet with great enthusiasm. Volunteers came
up with lots of ideas on creative teaching techniques during the session. We
are in process of incorporating these ideas in our regular activities.

News

•Although,
most of the senior student batch is very talented, Wilson and Priyanka
deserve a special mention. Wilson is one of the most creative and outstanding
student of the senior batch in ~Pankhudi Mumbai. Priyanka on the other hand
is very creative and sincere. Both of them have set many examples to other
students.

•Among
~Pankhudi volunteers, Smriti Dey deserves a very special mention. She was
instrumental in designing the course structure and organizing the volunteer
meet.

Activities

Based on the improvement ideas,
the course structure has been revised. New teaching aids have also been added
to the course. Based on the children’s needs, we will put more emphasis on
English while continuing teaching Mathematics.

Vote of Thanks

Thanking all the volunteers of
~Pankhudi Mumbai for helping in teaching and other related activities.

WANTED

More volunteers are required for
teaching purposes

PUNE

Feature

We had reported last month that
the Protsahan kids (school dropout kids) have started taking interest in
studies. Now, Pune team is making efforts to bring the Protsahan kids back to
the main stream education.

We got kid’s parents interested by
conducting a counselling session with them. Parents showed interest in
sending their kids back to school and we are following up with them to keep
them interested. Kids are showing excitement with the prospect of going back
to the school. We are working with school authorities to get the students
admitted in 2009-2010 academic session. So far, we have received positive
response from all the 4 schools that we have worked with.

News

Amruta is
‘Performer of February Month’. She had been consistently contributing to the
weekend classes and brilliantly organized the scientific toy making workshop.

Activities

Scientific
Toy Making Workshop:

On 10th February, Protsahan kids participated in
the Scientific Toys making workshop organized by “Mohile Parikh Center for
the Visual Arts” (MPCVA) and Mr. Arvind Gupta. The workshop showcased
creativity and ingenuity in making toys out of daily use materials. Children
had a lot of fun.

Protsahan:

·Regular classes for the
younger kids were conducted on weekdays.

·Weekend classes were
conducted for the elder kids.

Sahayog:

·Regular classes were
conducted at ‘Nachiket Balgram’ for the students of std. X.

Vote of Thanks

·MPCVA for inviting / conducting scientific toys
making workshop for the Protsahan kids.

·Entire Pune team for their continuous and untiring
support.

WANTED

·Volunteers for Protsahan classes situated near
Shivaji Nagar

oWeekday Batch (Mon-Fri: 6 pm – 8pm)

oWeekend Batches (Sat: 3pm – 7pm, Sun: 2pm – 6 pm)

·Volunteers for Ashayein project situated near
Sukhsagar Nagar/VIT College or Kothrud (only on weekends)

With Ms. Aasmeen taking the
regular classes for the children at the Priyanka Camp, Okhla, our role has
shifted to that of evaluators rather than teacher. We often take small
quizzes to check if students are sincerely learning from Ms. Aasmeen. We are
also helping the children with their conversational skills (learning to say
their name, what fruits they like, the colours they like etc.). As next step,
we are planning to teach Mathematics and Moral Science through an organized
curriculum.

Activities

We have further organized our
activities at the slum by dividing the children into small groups. 1-2
volunteers have taken responsibility for the progress of each group. We are
maintaining a progress report of the children. This progress report contains
the personalized teaching activity for each child and their progress in terms
of strengths and weaknesses.

Vote of Thanks

Entire
Delhi team for their continuous support

WANTED

·A
sheltered classroom space that fits about 25 children where we can have basic
infrastructure such as a whiteboard, store books and stationary and more.

·Volunteers
for our Sunday Protsahan activity as well as teachers to teach on a regular
basis.

To handle kids especially young
ones is the second most difficult task for me (the first one being
interacting with 'the fairer' of the fairer gender, no racial discrimination
intended). Yet, I volunteered to the ~Pankhudi Delhi Okhla initiative taking
a cue from a saying: ‘Expose yourself to your deepest fear, after that your
fear has no power’, although I haven’t had any chance (or courage) to take
the cue for the most difficult task I just mentioned.

After this short introduction, let
me now jump to the main topic. But before that, a short definition of a
volunteer (don’t worry, it’s not mine): ‘A volunteer is a person who undertakes a task out of his own initiative
and makes it his own responsibility to fulfill it without expecting any
materialistic returns for himself’.

And since the volunteer takes the
responsibility of the task, it becomes his duty to persistently perform all
the hard work (is it that hard ever, I doubt) that is needed to get things
going and ultimately get them done. And persistence in itself implies
patience, in doing work and thus in bringing about a change in the society.
Otherwise persistence will have no meaning. Or putting it in reverse order,
being patient implies being persistent, of course excluding the case of being
patient enough to just be lazy and hence being persistent in “not” doing any
work!, which is completely in contrast with the basic trait of a volunteer
(to work on one’s own initiative). For example, while teaching kids we should
be persistent enough to keep on teaching them until they learn but should be
patient, in teaching them, enough till they start showing some results or
even marginal improvements.

There’s one more trait, which in
fact fits in any kind of work i.e. learning. If we are not learning while
doing a task, we can’t bring any improvements in our efforts, ultimately
getting kind of stagnated. Similar is the case with volunteers. For example,
while in the process of teaching kids we learn how to make the kids learn and
how to make learning an interesting task for them which finally help us
(volunteers) learn new effective ways of teaching.

At the end of the day, doing all
the work with persistent efforts and patience while simultaneously learning
new ideas and implementing them in all our efforts gives us the satisfaction
of being responsible to the society and bringing about a change, no matter
how small it may be.

After all, boond boond karke hi
ghada bharta hai!

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) - Critical Analyses

Views of Mr. Mallesh Bommanahal,

Volunteer, Pankhudi Mumbai

CSR: Have you heard of it? (Wiki for it)

Does your Company have a
CSR Program? (Check it on their Webpage)

What do they do? (Ask
someone who is involved in it)

Do they publish a
sustainability report or is it included in their annual performance report?
(Again… their webpage)

Why do they do it? (It’s
obvious if you are working for, say a tobacco company… :P)

How are all the above
questions relevant? (You will know in a short while)

While I enable you to analyze the
answers to all these Qs here, I want a promise from you that you will answer
mine stated at the end of this article.

“Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) is to pursue those policies; make those decisions or to follow those
lines of action which are desirable in terms of values and objectives of our
society”, HR Bowen (1953).

Industrialization causes migration
of people leading to formation of cities and therefore congestion. It
consumes natural resources and also produces harmful wastes. It significantly
impacts the life-standards of its employees, in both positive and negative
ways. Therefore, environment, employees and society at large, are important
stake holders of the businesses.Corporate participates for the enhancement of these stakeholders
through CSR. CSR is not a depiction of corporate altruism, but an important
part of the corporate operations. Companies in turn are benefitted by a
favorable public image and it also helps them in protecting their long term
interests.HR Bowen’s words are a very
broad guideline for the objectives of CSR.

But not everyone concurs with these ideas.
As Wikipedia states, “Critics argue that CSR distracts from the fundamental
economic role of businesses; others argue that it is nothing more than
superficial window-dressing; some others argue that it is an attempt to pre-empt
the role of governments as a watchdog over powerful multinational
corporations.”

All the people involved in the
business are important stake holders; be it in the economic pursuits or
otherwise. Businesses are easily one of the two largest entities influencing
are lives, the other one being governments. Hence, a holistic understanding
of these influences and actions based on it is essential.

Awareness among the Corporate on
these issues has increases and CSR has received a wider industrial
recognition. A Times of India article dated 17th Aug, 2008 stated that 63%
companies in India have initiated their CSR activities during 1991-2005.
Further, almost 90% of the large organizations are involved in CSR
initiatives. The undertake activities in variety of areas environment
protection, educational development, health programs and women-empowerment.
Some of the most popular methods of implementing CSR amongst the corporate
are,

·Material Support: In-kind donations and access to company
resources for creating
awareness about a social cause

·Cause Related Marketing: Committing a
fixed percentage of the revenue for a social cause. This is a win-win
situation for the company and it customers; it helps to improve the sales of
the product. For e.g. ‘Re 1 from the sales of surf excel being donated for school
education’.

·Corporate Social Marketing:
Supporting implementation of an action; for e,g. ‘Teach India’ Campaign by
the Times Foundation; ‘Jago Re’ campaign by TATA Tea.

·Corporate philanthropy: Company makes direct donations to a
Non-Profit in the form of cash or materials

·Community Volunteering: A corporation supports
and encourages employees for volunteering in Social development activities.

·Socially responsible business practices: A
company adopts business
practices best suited for protecting consumer interests; protecting the
environment and safety of operations etc.

But, how real are these rosy
pictures painted by companies?

To realize this, the role of
social auditing and reporting becomes important. It is essential for the
companies to define their CSR objectives clearly; to set up a strategy to
achieve them and to report the evaluation of their impact and therefore
success in a transparent way. The good NEWS is that about 75% of the G250
companies already do this, as found out by KPMG’s International Corporate
Responsibility Survey 2008. But only 4% of them incorporated their
sustainability activities in their Annual performance reports. Does this mean
that CSR can still be considered to be of secondary significance for the rest
of the firms, is the question that remains unanswered.

CSR among Indian firms faces some
challenges like,

·Lack of a platform to enable Private-Public-NGO
partnerships for development and implementation of the most effective solutions to social
and environmental problems

·Lack of transparency among organizations about
their operations and results.

·Lack of knowledge and awareness about CSR

·Setting up of objectives, strategic planning
and lack of procedures for evaluation of impact

Media involvement can be a good
method to create awareness about CSR. Introduction of CSR in small and medium
enterprises can help the efforts to trickle to remote areas. Creating an
independent agency for accreditation of CSR can improve accountability as
well as lead to recognition of the efforts in CSR. Proactive government
support can be a method to encourage CSR. These and many more actions
motivating the companies towards CSR will go a long way in rapid social
development of the nations

“Companies state lofty goals for
CSR initiatives like nation building, wealth creation and greener world”
observed a study by the Times foundation; but the reality of these goals is
contingent upon the commitment of the corporations and its people.

As a part of the organization you
are working for, how do you think a common employee can make a difference to
the firm through its CSR Initiatives? Ideas please…